Every year the NFL season starts out with half of the league’s 32 teams winning and the other half losing. Then everyone wants to predict what all of them will do based on this one game. They forget that Sunday’s NFL openers are just chapter one in a 20 week story.
There have been times when teams have stormed out of the gate on opening day with a victory and never looked back. The 1991 Washington Redskins crushed the Detroit Lions 45-0 and went on to win Super Bowl XXVI.
There have been times when teams have stormed out of the gate and done nothing. The 1993 Redskins defeated the defending world champion Dallas Cowboys 35-16 on opening day. They finished the season 4-12 while Dallas went on to win another title.
Every year it happens. A couple of teams that everyone expects to be good lose on opening day and the doomsayers are asking what’s wrong. A couple of teams that everyone expects to be bad win and everyone is saying that they may be better than we thought.
Pro football is a week to week business in which teams are only remembered by the last game that they play. If it is a victory, everything is upbeat and everyone happy. Mistakes and errors are forgotten, because the game was won.
If the last game was a loss, then everything is wrong with the world. The quarterback stinks. The coaches stink. The defense stinks. Every mistake is gone over and dissected. This will continue until the team finds a way to win a game.
We had an old saying when I coached football. Winning is great, because it helps build confidence. Losing erodes confidence, because you don’t know if your going to win again.
The good teams know that the first game is only one of sixteen. They don’t want to lose, but know if they do there are 15 more to go. A team must pace itself so as not to get too high or low each week.
Fans and media aren’t good at this. They think short term while teams think big picture.
A good lesson for fans to take from opening day occurred in 2003.
The week before the New England Patriots played the Buffalo Bills they cut safety Lawyer Milloy. He was immediately picked up by the division rival Buffalo Bills who also had former Patriot Drew Bledsoe as their quarterback. The move so angered many of the Patriots players that there were rumblings of team dissension.
That Sunday Buffalo pounded New England 31-0. There were those in the media who said that Patriots head coach Bill Belichick had lost his team by releasing Milloy and the loss to the Bills proved it. New England was written of as finished. Meanwhile, Buffalo became the new flavor of the month in the AFC East.
Three months later, the two teams met in Foxboro for the last game of the regular season. The Patriots stood at 13-2 while the Bills were 6-9. New England paid back Buffalo by reversing that 31-0 opening day score. New England went on to win the Super Bowl while Buffalo finished third in the division.
The Bills had written the first chapter in their favor. And many who read it, put the book down saying that they knew the outcome. Those who stuck with it saw the story unfold in favor of the Patriots.
They knew that chapter one of Patriots-Bills 2003 was only the first of a five month story.